I don’t want to write this article.I want to write an article with the title “With Starfield confirmed six months away, this Outer Worlds remaster will do a good job of tideing you over”. or something else.because The Outer WorldsA bold, space-constrained, deliciously self-aware RPG at the end of its previous generation in late 2019, Obsidian is a stellar game.
it’s great. A sort of spiritual follow-up to Fallout: New Vegas, bringing a whole new retro-futuristic sci-fi world into the Western RPG pantheon, where stats actually matter and voice checks are as important to the experience as having the biggest as important as your gun. I loved it then, was delighted a year later when they released a performance-enhancing patch for the current generation of consoles, and even happier when they announced the sequel.
While we wait for TOW2 (and Starfield, of course), it seems like a sure bet to provide us fans of this sort of thing with some remakes to enjoy. The publisher has generously provided PS5 code for us to test, and I can’t wait to get back into it.
Then I dare to move the right stick outside, and my heart sinks: frankly, the frame rate is the toilet. In general, this version is nowhere near what you’d expect from a remaster, but at least, you’d expect a four-year-old last-gen game to maintain a solid 60fps in what it ambitiously called “Performance Mode” .
It is not. Right now, we can only verify what’s happening with the PS5 in person, but reports abound of performance issues across all platforms. And, to their credit, they’ve acknowledged the issues and promised to release a patch in due course (we’re not sure from this tweet if an actual patch will be released next week, or if it’s just the patch notes).
Our teams are working on patches for PC and consoles to address many of the visual and performance issues reported by players. We really appreciate your patience and we’ll be able to share this and the full list of patch notes with you by the end of next week. https://t.co/xXiMqpiDyX
— Private Division (@PrivateDivision) March 9, 2023
iGamesNews
What causes the wildly inconsistent framerate is anyone’s guess. Shader compilation issues have been suggested as a possible cause, but if you’re experiencing this on the console, something is terribly wrong. I hope they fix it, because now it’s basically unplayable if the constant stutter bothers you. it should. Especially if you own a TV with VRR capability, which is what I do, unfortunately even with the overlay turned on in the PS5’s display options, it’s a completely unused feature in the current build.
Whether or not you suffer from a stutter, there’s no disputing the fact that it’s not a good look for publishers. The remake project has already drawn attention for its tight pricing: a £10 paid upgrade option is available for those who already own the full original game and the two DLCs. For many of us who played the original via Gamepass and purchased the DLC on it, this doesn’t qualify. It’s a full-priced version, excluding paid upgrades, at £49.99 (not the full price of the £70 game, but more than enough by most people’s standards I bet). Going all the way for a version that doesn’t even work like the existing version just makes the piss more complicated.
If it weren’t for performance issues (which probably won’t be a factor anytime soon), it’s still hard to recommend from what we’ve seen so far in the game’s opening hours. That’s not to say the art changes are bad across the board, but a lot of them seem ill-considered.
First off, okay. kind of. The most notable change is the lighting: in the Spacer’s Choice version, it’s warmer, less drab, and more contrasty. Textures are also generally a bit sharper, and there is a surprising amount of geometry that is very different from the original: entire rock formations now exist where they didn’t before. There’s more foliage, and the transition between the dirt road and the grass on either side is less rough. When we’re talking scenery, the remake looks much better in A/B comparisons.
Islands in the distance look less lo-fi now, and the sea stretches convincingly to the horizon instead of becoming a uniform patchwork of water bricks like the sea in the older games. Man-made structures also look a little more refined, with sharper textures and more pronounced shadows, adding a dramatic touch to things like buildings and spaceships.
Unfortunately, this new lighting direction doesn’t do it any justice at all. For a game where you spend a lot of time chatting with people, this is a huge problem. Many character models have been tweaked and retextured to add more detail to people’s faces and clothing, but in many cases the new lighting model casts their faces awkwardly in shadows, covering their eyes And makes the dialogue system, frankly, less appealing to interact with. The Outer Worlds has a lot of great RPG digital performances, with expressive faces and lifelike eyes, it’s a pity that the game’s zealous overhaul of lighting used to cover it up, or worse, make it ill-lit Convincingly unattractive.
The first NPC you encounter in the game is obvious, worryingly sitting in a well-lit cave. indoors. The light on his face is not governed by the day/photo cycle. The developers have full control over the clarity and readability of his face, however, Guard Pelham is cast in such an unflattering light here – his face is split in half by the harsh glare, his Eyes melted into the darkness — so much so that this encounter simply didn’t play out as well as it did in 2019. Projecting empathy through the eyes, this character should have a crisis. Right now, it’s less clear–the player won’t feel at all when they end up unnecessarily shooting him in the head and taking all of his stuff.
The look of this remake is dangerously close to the kind of stupidity that happens when people with no sense of art direction start adding tons of “reality” mods to Skyrim. You know that kind of thing. The 4K photo scan texture pack doesn’t quite match the original style. Lighting and weather mods boast about their GPU-busting realism, but they’re just too off-putting compared to the expertly designed systems they’re replacing. Sacrifice coherence and nuance on the altar of superficial technical improvement.
It’s not that bad, don’t get me wrong, but the changes shown do show the same random disregard for the artistic choices made in the original. It’s a shame, because the enhanced landscaping does look nice. But the cost is too high, especially considering performance issues.
Much to the disappointment of PS5 owners, it makes no apparent use of the DualSense feature set at all. There’s weird vibrations when something explodes, sure, but it’s pretty monotonous. There’s nothing the N64 rumble pack can’t achieve equally convincingly.
In short: the Spacer’s Choice version is a massive failure in its current state, and while there is a performance patch in the works, I’d still recommend sticking with the original version, whether you’re new to the game or not. We will release an update in the coming weeks once the fix is live.
